Benefits of Playing Chess for Youths

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Studies

In a Texas study, regular (non-honors) elementary students who participated in a school chess club showed twice the improvement of non-chess players in Reading and Mathematics between 3rd and 5th grades on the Texas Assessment of Academic skills.

A New Brunswick, Canada, study, using 437 5th graders split into three groups, experimenting with the addition of chess to the math curriculum, found increased gains in math problem-solving and comprehension proportionate to the amount of chess in the curriculum.

In a Zaire study conducted by Dr. Albert Frank, employing 92 students, age 16-18, the chess-playing experimental group showed a significant advancement in spatial, numerical and administrative-directional abilities, along with verbal aptitudes, compared to the control group. The improvements held true regardless of the final chess skill level attained.

In a Belgium study a chess-playing experimental group of 5th graders experienced a statistically significant gain in cognitive development over a control group, using Piaget's tests for cognitive development. Perhaps more noteworthy, they also did sigificantly better in their regular school testing, as well as in standardized testing administered by an outside agency which did not know the identity of the two groups. Quoting Dr. Adriaan de Groot: "In addition, the Belgium study appears to demonstrate that the treatment of the elementary, clear-cut and playful subject matter can have a positive effect on motivation and school achievement generally..."

The Venezuela "Learning to Think Project," which trained 100,000 teachers to teach thinking skills, and which involved a sample of 4,266 2nd grade students, reached a general conclusion that chess, methodologically taught, is an incentive system sufficient to accelerate the increase of IQ in elementary age children of both sexes at all socio-economic levels.

A study using a subset of New York City Schools Chess Program produced statistically significant results concluding that chess participation enhances reading performance. A related study, conducted in five U.S. cities over two years, selected two classrooms in each of five schools. The group receiving instruction in chess and logic obtained significantly higher reading scores than the control groups, which received additional classroom instruction in basic education.

FACTS

				Chess is found as required curricula in nearly 30 countries.
				In Vancouver B.C., the Math and Chess Learning Center, recognizing the correlation between chess playing and math skills development, has developed a series of workbooks to assist (Canadian) students in math.
				The mathematics curriculum in New Brunswick, Canada, is a text series called "Challenging Mathematics" which uses chess to teach logic from grades 2 to . Using this curriculum, the average problem-solving score of pupils in the province increased from 62% to 81%. The Province of Quebec, where the program was first introduced, has the best math marks in Canada and Canada scores better than the U.S. on international mathematics exams.
				Former U.S. Secretary of Education Terrell Bell encourages knowledge of chess as a way to develop a preschooler's intellect and academic readiness.
				The State of New Jersey passed a bill legitimizing chess as a unit of instruction within the elementary school curriculum. A quote from the bill states: "In countries where chess is offered widely in schools, students exhibit excellence in the ability to recognize complex patterns and consequently excel in math and science..."